Youth and Conflict

UN-Habitat´s work in engaging youth as positive stakeholders in fragile states is developing strategies to engage in national youth policies in Somalia and Afghanistan. Part of the discussions are with the Secretary-General´s Envoy on Youth, the World Bank and Search For Common Ground on how to ensure the trickle-down effect of seeing youth as assets and not as troublemakers. There is a growing recognition globally that youth can play a positive role in building peace even in the most fragile of states. We have seen both in Somalia and Afghanistan government and youth working together to craft national policies and develop programmes that assure youth’s engagement in governance. In the Democratic Republic of Congo youth and peacebuilding centres are being established based on the successful Kimisigara One Stop Youth Resource Centre in Kigali, Rwanda. The discussion in New York highlighted different models of youth engagement in peacebuilding in fragile states, with the goal to initiating a discussion on the factors that go into creating successful initiatives, and what the roles of youth, local and national governments, and the UN have in supporting these.